My Days Aren’t Always Perfect

The time that I call perfection is around 9:30 p.m., when we’ve said good night to both of our children, and they are either asleep or on their way to sweet, sweet dreams.

It’s been a while since I’ve opened myself up to you all for a parenting tale. While getting all my grey hairs covered last week, I was chatting with my stylist about an incident I had with my children while on a writing assignment. She encouraged me to tell this story so I will have it to remember, which is essentially what a lot of these parenting tales are for me.

With it being summer vacation, I took the kids with me on a story I was writing. I was to meet the public relations representative, then sit down with the restaurant owners for an interview and sample of some menu items. Easy enough. I take my kids to lunch a lot. They love to eat out, so I thought this would be no different in my book.

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My 4-year-old took one look at the very nice men we were meeting then went into a spell that only a 4-year-old could do.

She immediately declared she wanted to leave and acted as if she was scared.

I really didn’t need the drama right then. Of all times. I needed to fill an obligation. Thank goodness, I had at least one child acting correctly.

I took the little one outside and let my son chat with the hosts.

Without creating a scene or making my daughter even more upset, I tried to explain that I had to work and that we could not leave, but if she would be brave, I would take her for yogurt, but that we had to stay, and she could not act this way.

She refused to eat and hid under the table at my legs tapping at me while I tried to go on as if all was fine while profusely apologizing at the same time.

The misbehaving one saw that her brother’s entrée had a chocolate chip cookie. I asked for one for her to have, too, in order to buy me some more time hassle-free.

She ate the cookie in my lap facing backwards so she did not have to look at our hosts. One host was single. The other one has a new baby.

I’m sure we were all like strange aliens to them because a baby may cry, but a baby is so sweet and innocent that a new parent has not yet seen the true wrath of a child.

The restaurant was not busy, so my children got up to look around and play in another booth.

I was home free and could actually talk to my hosts without any interruptions.

Spoke too soon.

My son comes back holding his eye and claims his sister punched him there. It looked bad.

At this point, I could have crawled under the table from embarrassment.

My gracious hosts got him some ice for his eye, and I applied pressure to it.

I asked for an iced tea to go, but I really needed a stiff drink.

Poor guys! They probably don’t know what hit them during that 45 minutes we were there. I will forever be remembered as the crazy journalist who had even crazier kids.

But they loved my story. We’ve been back there to dine, even the scared one. I’ve become their biggest fans, and they’ve become mine.

I’m sure the owner with the baby went home scared because he knew what could possibly be in store for him with his own son.

I can hear him tell his wife now, “Honey, you won’t believe what happened at work today…..”